Teaching Sexuality

by Jane Rule

The furor created by The Body
Politic's "Men loving boys loving men" posed hard political questions
for me. On the one hand, I deplore repressive police action designed not
only to stifle any discussion of the subject of sexual activity across
generations, but also to intimidate anyone even so involved with the paper
as to be a subscriber. On the other hand, I understand the rage against
sexual exploitation by men not only of children of both sexes but of women
and other men, the pleasures of which The Body Politic can sometimes be
accused of advertising. I am convinced that censoring serious discussion
of unconventional sexual relationships does nothing to protect those who
might be exploited. To test, to contest, is the only way to reach forward
into understanding areas of human experience vulgarized by either taboo
or glorification.

As a society we are so fearful of
sexual initiation we pretend that by ignoring it, it will not take place.
What we really want is not to know when or how it does. We no longer frighten
our children with threats of insanity and death as results of masturbation.
It is, instead, clumped with picking one's nose, belching, farting -- something
not to be done in public, by implication not to be done by nice people
at all -- but we give our children enough privacy so that the guilty pleasure
can be discovered and practiced not only alone but in the company of other
unsupervised children. Children caught may be shamed, the more sexually
aggressive children ostracized, but itis not, asit usedto be, a cause for
brutal retribution.

Our embarrassed liberality on this
matter does not extend to encounters between children and adults. Though
anyone who spends any time with very young children knows that they are
aggressively curious about bodies -- everyone's bodies -- apt to stick
a finger not only in another's eye or nose but to reach for a nipple or
penis, we pretend that these assaults have nothing to do with sex, are
only part of the random and innocent activity which can be ignored or distracted.
The adult who actively participates in sexual instruction of children --
whether the nurse who teaches a child masturbation as a sedative or the
adult male who complies with a four-year-old's demand, "Show me your penis"
-- is simply criminal.

Sexual education in this culture,
when undertaken at all, is presented impersonally in abstract diagrams,
unlike any other teaching of bodily function or domestic habit. Once the
breast is unavailable for nourishment and the lap outgrown, sexual pleasure
is presented as a far off and nearly mystical reward for years of asexual
(or at least secret) behaviour. If defecating and eating were left to the
same secrecy and chance we might face the same problems with basic sanitation
and nutrition that we do with sex. When the relatively simple task of teaching
table manners takes so many years, why do we assume that sexual manners
need not be taught at all?

Formal sexual initiations in other
cultures may serve as bad examples of what we might teach if given permission:
the mutilation of female genitals and the equating of sexual gratification
with the kill in males. Both these puberty rituals express attitudes toward
sexuality in our own culture, and it is no wonder that we can therefore
be alarmed at exposing children to adult sexuality. If we viewed sex as
a basic appetite normally satisfied and gradually cultivated, we would
not need to keep our children isolated and in ignorance for so long, building
in them what we have ourselves experienced: intense fear and desire which,
so long uninstructed, produce dangerous stupidity. Of course we don't want
dangerously stupid adults initiating our children. Fear of that leaves
the children to themselves, not out of our conviction that children are,
in this matter, the best teachers, but by default. We have so little trust
in what we have to teach that we not only abdicate our responsibility but
label criminal any adult who might attempt instruction.

There are adults who do sexually
exploit, damage and kill children. It makes no more sense to deal with
the question by taking them as the norm than it would to take rapists as
the norm for heterosexual relationships between adults. To say that any
sexual activity between adults and children is exploitative because of
the superior size and power of the adult is really to acknowledge that,
overall, relationships between adults and children are unequal. Why we
feel more concerned over children's sexual dependence than over their physical,
emotional, and intellectual dependence says more about us as sexual incompetents
than as responsible adults.

Children are at our mercy. They
are at each other's mercy as well. It makes about as much sense to leave
children's sexual nourishment to their peers as it would to assume that
the mud pies they make for each other are an adequate lunch. I use the
term "sexual" rather than "sensual" because it seems to me that both our
embarrassment about and focus on genitals make us the inept sexual creatures
most of us are. A child's need for physical contact is as sexual as our
own. It takes as little imagination to know that a child's sexual appetite
is different from an adult's as it does to figure out that a newborn baby
can't eat an apple or a steak. We don't therefore refuse to feed an infant.

If children's sexual independence
were as thoughtfully taught as their ability to feed themselves, masturbation
would become the satisfying accomplishment that it should be. Being able
to gratify oneself provides an autonomy that is basic to self-respect and
therefore respect for others. Sexual play based on the understanding of
pleasure can have associated with it as many small courtesies as eating
with other people, as much ritual wonder as the most sacred of games. Just
as children gradually learn greater autonomy and responsibility in all
other aspects of living, so their development in sexuality should be gradual
until they come to the choices of commitment in relationships, in parenting,
not as sex-starved barbarians willing to barter anything for the experience
so long forbidden, not as infantile, gluttonous, guilty and dangerously
stupid, but as warm, sexually intelligent human beings.

Until we have a responsible view
of our own sexuality, we will go on shirking our responsibilty to our children.
We live in so homophobic a society that most adults are terrified of expressing
any affection with children of their own sex, and even discourage those
friendships often most meaningful among children. Mothers can be jealous
of, rather than delighted in, their daughters' sexuality, so ambivalent
about themselves as women that they don't know what sort of victimization
to recommend. Fathers compete with sons, warning them off the lotus land
of sexual pleasure which will only deter them from the conquest of whatever
world has been chosen for them, be it military service or medical school.
For every child traumatized by overt and brutal sekual treatment, there
are many, many more suffering the damage of ignorance and repression which
makes masochistic women and sadistic men the norms of our society.

The choice is not really between
child-rape and chastity into late adolescence, nor is it between perversion
and orthodox heterosexuality. We do have the further option of accepting
our own sexuality and therefore that of our children as a complex blessing
which we and they must learn neither to exploit nor deny but to enjoy with
sensitivity and intelligence.

Such a change in attitude doesn't
come-quickly or easily. It will not come at all unless we are willing to
address the question seriously and openly. Police who use violence and
intimidation to silence such discussion, who seein every adult interested
in the sexuality of children a molester and murderer, are themselves victims
as well as perpetuators of oursexual sickness. If we discover through reading
"Men loving boys loving men" that we question the motives of the men involved,
we must as certainly question our own in allowing our children to choose
such experiments while pretending not to. We must also examine the motives
of all interaction between adults and children (how much has ever been
done "for their own good," how much we simply reinforce our own values)
before we are too purely suspicious of anything but disinterested altruism
in adults who relate to children.

More important than judging the
quality of other people's experience and relationships is the exercise
of our own memories. Certainly my own initiation came long before I was
legally adult. Though a number of males around my age offered to participate,
a woman ten years my senior was "responsible," at my invitation and encouragement.
The only fault I find with that part of my sexual education was the limit
her guilt and fear put on our pleasure, the heterosexual pressure even
she felt required to put on me. What she did "for my own good" caused both
of us pain. If I were to improve on that experience now, it would not be
to protect children from adult seduction but to make adults easier to seduce,
less burdened with fear or guilt, less defended by hypocrisy.

If we accepted sexual behaviour
between children and adults, we would be far more able to protect our children
from abuse and exploitation than we are now. They would be free to tell
us, as they can about all kinds of other experiences, what is happening
to them and to have our sympathy and support instead of our mute and mistrustful
terror. There are a thousand specific questions, all hard to answer, but
we can't begin dealing with them until our basic attitude changes.

Children are sexual, and it is up
to us to take responsibility for their real education. They have been exploited
and betrayed long enough by our silence.